H.S. HOCKEY: The kids are all right for Abington

A young Green Wave hockey team prepares to play in the MIAA Div. 3 Tournament.

Glen Farley The Enterprise @GFarley_ent

They’ve put the green in the Green Wave.

“We’re definitely a young team,” Abington High School hockey coach Brian Smith said. “We lost half our team (12 players) to graduation so this really was a brand new year. I had to teach a lot of kids all the systems. It’s definitely been a teaching process this season.”

The students enrolled in Mr. Smith’s High School Hockey 101 course learned their lessons well enough to win more than they lost, emerging from the regular season with 21 points (8-7-5) to qualify for the upcoming MIAA Div. 3 Tour nament.

“I’m not surprised,” said Mike Flaherty, coach of Abing ton’s South Shore League rival, Rockland. “Brian’s a real good coach who gets his kids, from top to bottom, to play completely. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have a guy like (senior de fenseman) Jake Quinlan back there, either.

“He’s got eight freshmen, but he’s got a kid like (forward) Kevin O’Neil who I’ve seen play for years. His father was a real good player at Abington so the gene pool’s pretty good there. Then you’ve got guys like Jake, Joe Marella, (ju nior forward), Chris Fay transferred in (from Catholic Memorial) and he’s a solid leader, and you throw in (junior forward) Matty Curran who I think is the hardest-working kid on the south shore.

“That’s a good group for them to follow,” said Flaherty. “If those guys are going like they nor mally do, he’s got a pretty good group to lead them. They’re going to be tough (in the tourna ment) I wouldn’t want to play them.”

A rarity in that he is a senior (one of four) on this edition of the Wave, Marella can’t wait to watch them next year.

But first things first, of course.

“I’ll be excited to see what they do next year,” said Marella, a forward on the Green Wave’s first line, “but first, hopefully we can finish off this year right.”

The way Smith figures it, whatever the tourna ment may hold, his team won’t get outworked.

“Their work ethic is better than any team I’ve ever coached here,” said Smith. “They have the heart.

“I told them after the game we made the play offs that this team has the most heart I’ve ever coached personally. They just come out and work hard, never stop from the time the puck is dropped until the last buzzer no matter what the score is. They just keep working. I give them a lot of credit for that.”

Marella seconds that motion.

“I honestly think we work harder than any team in the state,” he said. “Hard work ... We’ll see if it pays off in the end.”

With members of Abington’s Class of 2017 contributing, to the surprise of some there has been no end to the Green Wave’s season as yet.

Marella admits he didn’t know what to expect when the Wave opened the season by skating to a 4-4 with Plymouth North more than two months ago.

“All I knew was that we had lost a bunch of seniors and that there were big shoes to fill,” said Marella, an assistant captain who three years ago broke in with the Wave as a freshman skating on the second line. “Obviously, a freshman’s shoes aren’t as big as a senior’s, but a lot of them have stepped up when we needed them to. They’ve done a pretty good job for us so far. No excuses, no complaints.”

Confidence has been gained along the way.

“Where there was a lot of confusion at the be ginning of season as to where players needed to be on the ice and how the system was run, as it progressed there was a point I saw the light bulb go off on top of their heads and saw them get it,” said Smith. “I saw them playing with confidence. They weren’t afraid to make mistakes and that’s the biggest thing.”

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